Ameriatch One of the best films i have seen

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Phillida Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

morrison-dylan-fan After watching the spectacular first Mission Impossible movie again recently,I decided to check Emmanuelle Béart's other credits.Discovering on Amazon UK and her IMDb page that 90% of Béart's credits were French flicks,I was taken aback,when I spotted a Neo- Noir (for £3) that looked liked the ultimate French 90's Noir,with the credits revealing that Béart was joining auteur film maker Claude Chabrol-and a screenplay from Henri-Georges Clouzot!,which led to me excitingly getting ready to jump into this Noir hell.The plot:Repairing an inn, Paul Prieur meets Nelly.Soon falling for each other, Prieur and Nelly soon get married and have a child. Initially living together in married bliss, Prieur starts to get anxious at every man who gives Nelly the smallest glance.Ignoring her explanations, Prieur begins secretly following Nelly on her daily routine.Catching his wife (possibly) being flirty, Prieur begins imagining the erotic acts that Nelly has performed with other men,which leads to the line between fantasy and reality in Prieur's mind crumbling away,as he and Nelly enter a pit of hell.View on the film:Lit up from the screenplay of Henri-Georges Clouzot's unfinished film, Chabrol (with additional dialogue from José-André Lacour) unleashes a Neo-Noir that is a perfect tribute to Clouzot,and also one whose themes allow the title to proudly stand on its own feet.Caught in a whirlwind romance, Chabrol gives the early days of Nelly and Prieur a bourgeoisie dream giving them a "perfect" image to the outside world.Twisting the knife into Neo-Noir,Clouzot and Chabrol display an extraordinary attention to detail for Prieur's lock into a Neo-Noir world,by making the slightest attempt Nelly makes to place a gap between them,lead to Prieur blurring the lines between his deeply troubling Neo-Noir "fantasies" in his mind,with the burning hell that he is shoving himself and Nelly in.Presenting their marriage in fluid camera moves, Chabrol & cinematographer Bernard Zitzermann chip away at the light with brittle Neo-Noir darkness,via caving in the light colours with unrelenting shadows engulfing their lives. Dipping into Prieur's fractured mind, Chabrol grabs the neck of Prieur,via casting shimming shadows round Prieur's throat,that are lit up by Monique Fardoulis's razor sharp editing twisting and turning the murky nightmares and realities of Prieur and Nelly.Becoming entwined with Prieur looking ravishingly beautiful, Emmanuelle Béart gives an immaculate performance as Nelly,whose care-free nature Béart makes shine,which is brilliantly turned into a shell shocked soul who cant find an escape from the Neo-Noir pit.Entering the title looking like a gentlemen, François Cluzet gives a magnificent performance as Prieur.Starting with a nervous grin, Cluzet subtly pulls the veins out of Prieur's anxiety and suspicions across the screen and circles them round the decayed relationship,as Prieur and Nelly enter Chabrol's and Clouzot's inferno.

alicecbr Why would a woman stay with a man who is trying to kill her? Why would she even spend the night with a crazy man, when the hospital is coming to take him to the loony bin the next morning? There's too much deaux ex machina stuff going on here.But the writers did foresee this objection: they made her kinda simple, a hip-swinging flirt, oblivious to the effect she has on other men and her increasingly more jealous husband. She even keeps it up when she finds out about his jealous, but in her stupidity, she thinks it means he truly loves her.There has been another French movie on this same subject, with the husband becoming increasingly more jealous. As much as I love these Frenchies, with their afternoon delights, I find it weird that the French MEN would make 2 great movies about a French MAN becoming jealous. If it's so well accepted, why this? Maybe there's a lot of suppression going on.And here's another point well made: financial problems can drive you crazy. He was not having a lot of business, and his insanity causes him to drive even more away as he rages in full hearing of his guests....and later, full sight. Too bad we're not allowed any insight into the origins of his craziness. Those voices don't just come in out of the blue.The woman, Emmanuelle, was truly beautiful and would have had to have been in order to carry this movie off. His insanity did have some realistic triggers: men DID covet her, and she sure didn't try to hide her charms. Reminded me of Raquel Welch wearing her skin tight red t-shirt in "Mother, Jugs and Speed", then upbraiding the drivers for calling her 'Jugs'. A wee bit inconsistent, hypocritical of the characters in both movies.The male actor was superior in showing all the nuances of jealousy on his face, running desperately to parallel his wife's water-skiing escapade on the back of the Lothario's boat and finding her getting back on the boat after putting on her shoes. If I know my husband is jealous, I"m not going to further inflame him by going off with a guy like this. Again, she was kinda dumb and childish but that could have been made a bit more obvious.Like the ending. No one knows what really happened. Time for a sequel. This movie was just shown at the MFA in Boston. It calls for a re-run, but having been jealous myself, it's rather painful to watch.

Dan Schaefer As one of the originators of the New Wave, Claude Chabrol deserves a large amount of respect. His films such as Bon Femmes and Le Ceremonie put him in the high ranks of the best film makers, but in this case, L'Enfer, he does not match up to his own high standards. This could also just be my opinion since I didn't enjoy watching the downward spiral the characters go through.It was a ride I would rather not taken. Be that as it may, the film lacked a fullness of motivation for its lead, whose insanity seems to come from nowhere. Maybe again it is due to his mental illness, but as a viewer of the scene I needs to to know why. As France's Hitchcock, Chabrol needs to let us put the pieces together, as he let us do in his film The Unfaithful Wife, as we see the literal pieces of a puzzle reflecting the clues to the crime. If you love Emmanuel B'eart as we all do, you will find her and her fellow actors in good form, but the story falls flat.

George Parker "L'Enfer" peers into the lives of a married-with-kid couple who run a resort hotel. She is beautiful and vivacious and he is jealous. As the film wears on, it appears we're supposed to believe the husband's jealousy slowly morphs into insanity though we're increasingly confronted with what seem to be his visions of his wife in compromising situations until the end when circumstance and a messy montage leave us confused and not knowing what to think. The result is a superficial story of a man being consumed with jealousy and some underlying theme which serves only to confound and make the denouement unsatisfying. An okay drama recommended for Chabrol fans only. (C+)Note - The DVD is watched had poor quality remastering with less than true color; the speckles, zits, and lines of dusty and scratched film; and abrupt cuts which appeared to be poor editing.